Death & Other Unnatural Phenomenon is a concept album.
The concept, that I’ll explore through daily post for the next two weeks, is that of death, the acceptance of death, the joy of life, and the fear of an afterlife. The story that I’ll illustrate as we move through the tracks follows a protagonist who finds themselves confronting their own morality.
As a band we explored this story through the lyrics, structure, and even the mixing of the songs itself.
While I can’t call this album “serious”, well leave that to better bands like Radiohead, it is more mature in its sonic attack.
We have more ups and downs in the emotion of the songs. We allow some elasticity in what we previously “defined” as our sound. We took some risks that we won’t know if it will pay off until the record is in your hands in September.
Will the album still sound fun?
I really think so.
We have always been “serious” about not taking our music, ourselves, or the business of making music too “serious”. I think that still shows as we move from song to song with the same recklessness and chaotic energy we put into “The Holes In Your Face Are Pleasing.”
I know some people, Eric from fishboy, thinks we sometimes are all over the map when it comes to song writing. I can’t say I disagree.
What I do disagree with is that writing songs in the manner is a bad thing. Writing songs like this allows us to explore a high brow concept like death with the same low brow execution that we’ve put into all of our work thus far.
To us, it’s not really important how these songs connect together sonically, what is important is that they are out there in the ether banging up against one another.
I believe what makes a good album is not a constant style or mixing range, rather what’s important album, is that you create songs that can live together or alone.
That you make each song live and breathe like you would an episode of a television show or an act of a play. Each song on the album has a beginning,middle and end. Each set of songs on the album also have a beginning, middle, and end. The entire album follows this format.
By structuring the songs like this we did something pretty amazing in 41 minutes.
Something I thought a dumb little band that likes to write about zombies, dancing, and vampires could never do.
We created something that feels, at least to me, as important. And we did it the way we do everything, as friends talking and exploring a subject that made us feel lots of emotions.
Death & Other Unnatural Phenomenon is the fruit of this labor.
I’ll see you all Monday as I walk through the song Big Bang.
Until next time,
-J
